It is known to provide various safety switches for ski lift operation, such as a switch that will shut down the ski lift when it is sensed that a passenger has moved beyond the unloading position, when cable derailment occurs, and the like. However when cable derailment occurs, it may be very difficult to locate the exact location of cable derailment so that the problem may be corrected as quickly as possible. One method of determining such location is to provide a resistor, different for each such location, in shunt across the safety derailment switch so as to provide a different resistance of the total circuit for each such location for derailment location identity. However, such a system is difficult to use in that a momentary derailment switch operation may shut down the ski lift but not be a long enough duration to determine its location. Further if derailment occurs at more than one location, it may be very difficult to determine such locations. Further, the wide range of resistance values that would be necessary to determine the numerous possible locations in the circuit would require a substantially large corresponding range of current flow in the circuit upon shut down.
At the present time many ski areas, with multiple ski lifts are operated very inefficiently without the knowledge of management in that there may be long lines at one ski lift and no lines at another ski lift with no one being aware of the situation due to the substantial distances involved between the ski lifts. It is usual to provide manual ski lift stop switches at various locations along the ski lift, for example at an unloading area and a loading area. A ski lift may have one or more operators that are quite inefficient and repeatedly manually stop the ski lift, without management being aware of the situation in an efficient manner. Stoppage of a ski lift rated at 1200 skiers per hour for only 1 minute while handling a capacity crowd will increase the lift line by 20 skiers, and there is no way to recover from this added lift line length until some people stop skiing.
In general, there is no present efficient way of monitoring a ski lift or plurality of ski lifts so as to recognize chronic trouble areas, inefficiency, or to provide data for advanced planning, training and the like.